Wednesday, May 13, 2009

As I prepare some of my extra art for auction, a step towards financing my paper presentation at San Diego in July, I'm drooling over a pencil prelim of a Vaughn Bode' Deadbone page.My fascination with da Bode' waxes and wanes, but never completely fades. I wrote a bio piece on him for a gay comics website some years back, which has just resurfaced on the redesigned Gay League web page.I also wrote (and need to rewrite!) a structural analysis of Bode's work for San Diego three years ago, my first formal paper presentation.Vaughn was a pioneer in panel layout, use of materials, manipulation of language, and communication of raw emotion, often evoking comparisons to Walt Kelly in the the latter two respects.He was also known for his personal life, being sexually ambiguous, bisexual, prone to S & M experimentation, and a cross-dresser with transsexual tendencies.However, Trina Robbins described him as "a very eager straight boy who liked to dress up".